Re: The Chronicles Network Hall of Fame - Voting Thread
Nothing like a little nudging to get me up off my fanny...
Okay, here's my list (though I hope you realize that cutting this much puts a person periliously near needing hospitalization...)
1.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination, by Edgar Allan Poe
2.
The Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkien
3.
At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels, by H. P. Lovecraft
4.
The Dunwich Horror and Others, by H. P. Lovecraft
5.
Dune, by Frank Herbert
6.
The Foundation Trilogy, by Isaac Asimov
7.
The Gormenghast Trilogy, by Mervyn Peake
8.
The Past Through Tomorrow, by Robert A. Heinlein
9.
Again, Dangerous Visions, ed. by Harlan Ellison
10.
The Cornelius Quartet, by Michael Moorcock
I'd really like to have included Dunsany's
Gods of Pegana or
Book of Wonder (after all, he revived fantasy as a short story form with these books), or Machen's
The House of Souls (1906 Grant Richards edition), not to mention about 700 other things that I feel are darn near essentials... but I'll go with the above.
If anyone's interested: Poe's book changed the book of imaginative literature, has in one way or another influenced nearly everything that has come after, either primarily or secondarily, plus it's just a great collection of stories (I'm referring to the earlier editions, there have been several different ones, all quite good). I went with the two volumes of HPL because one has his novels, each of which has had a powerful influence and is also almost endlessly rereadable for sheer depth and texture, and yet some of his best work is in short story and novella form, hence
The Dunwich Horror.
Again, Dangerous Visions (I'd like to have included a book representing Ellison's work itself, because, aside from being a very powerful writer, he has had a huge impact on the field) because it either provided first sales/publications for many new writers who have since become paragons of the form, or allowed fledglings to spread their wings and show what they could do; it was also one of the best and most variegated examples of what the field could do at the time, and still provides a lot of very challenging reading. (It also, like a great number of his books, has a lot of good information for writers.)
The Cornelius Quartet is, for my money, one of Moorcock's richest books both in subtleties and layers of meaning/textuality, and certainly has one of the best handlings of time and reality in a state of flux I've ever encountered, especially by the time you reach
The English Assassin and
The Condition of Muzak.
I almost left out the Gormenghast book -- not because I don't think it's important or good; it is definitely both -- but because it had not overtly influenced a great many writers, being a relatively slow seller until recent years. However, as the number of writers Peake influenced grows, it allowed me to go ahead and include a book I love and admire on the list. I did not include any of the more recent writers, as it's still early days yet on how "important" many of them will be to the field over time, and because of the limitation being set at 10. This was the hardest part, as I think a pretty good number are going to end up being as important as those I named....
